Living a long and happy life in spite of having ALS/Lou Gehrig's disease

9. Living In Thanks

I remember dinners at my grandmothers house usually began with a prayer of thanks. As a little kid, that was probably the only time I stopped to think about what I was grateful for, other than at church on Sunday’s and while I was opening up my gifts on birthdays and at Christmas. It has taken me years to get into the habit of not just giving thanks, but living in thanks. Living in thanks is easier said than done. When you are in a good mood it is easy to sit back and think of things you are grateful for. It gets harder when nothing seems to be going right. It is hard to feel grateful when your only source of entertainment and link to the world outside your house is the internet, and your internet is down. It might, however, cause you to be extra grateful when it’s actually working. It may even allow you the time you would have normally spent scrolling through your Facebook newsfeed to do something else, like write a blog post about how grateful you are.

Writing down three things you are grateful for every day is a good way to get started living in thanks. If you can’t write them down, at least stop and think of three things. It can be anything at all. Something good that just happened, or maybe the sun is shining outside, or maybe your new puppy only had four accidents that day instead of the usual five. If you can keep a list or journal of what you are grateful for, when things aren’t going so well, you might feel better if you read through all the great things that have happened in the past.

When something goes wrong, I am trying to get into the habit of stopping in that moment to be grateful. One day, not so long ago, as I stood up at the toilet after having left my sample (required for my refill of pain medication) in the container on the toilet, as that plastic container stuck to my leg and the contents spilled out onto the floor, I was instantly grateful that this happened in my bathroom and not the bathroom of the doctors office. I may have even been a little bit grateful that I wasn’t able to (didn’t have to) clean it up. There’s always something to be grateful for, no matter what the situation. We just have to get into the habit of tuning in on the good stuff.

It’s one of my all time favorite books. Pam believes that when you live in gratitude, you are living in the frequency of miracles. I know that when I focus on the good things in life and expect more amazing things to show up, they do. If you tune in to a radio station that plays all rap music, and you want to hear classic rock, what will you get? Rap. Sure, every once in a while a classic, like “Walk This Way” will play, but you will mostly just get more of what you are tuned into. So, if you want to see more good things happen in your life, quit focusing on the not so good things, and tune in to all of the awesomeness already happening in your life and be ready for more.

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2 thoughts on “9. Living In Thanks ”

Thank you for this post. I write down ONE gratitude in my journal. I like your idea of doing three better! I plan to get a copy of ‘Thank and Grow Rich’, too. Great wisdom you share. This one was needed today.